Thursday, January 27, 2005

Wrongly configured DHCP sever & FC3

Recently I brought up Fedora Core 3 on my PC. My internet access is though a local LAN provided by my cable operator, so my PC is on DHCP and things work well with M$ Windows. Previously Rh9 was unable to setup the routing table properly so I hoped FC3 could do it, but finally problem has repeated in FC3.

The actual problem is that FC3 fails to setup default gateway it received from the DHCP server. I found that the gateway address doesn't belong to sub-network, so if it tries to add a default gateway it doesn't happen because the gateway should be reachable first, and there is no entry in routing table to route packets to the gateway. If gateway also belonged to the sub-network this would not have happened as there will be an entry for the local sub-network in routing table.

Form this I could fairly make out that DHCP sever is not configured properly, but call me a lazy boy I never bothered to confirm this and I raised a bug on dhcp in FC3 bugzilla. The bug owner Jason says DHCP server is not configured correctly, gateway IP should belong to local sub-network and dhcp client is not handling this situation correctly.

It is fair till now but he proposed a fix saying that if we detect this situation, don't bring up the interface and report an error to user. Now this I feel is not fair, agreed that DHCP server admin is a moron and wrongly configured the server, isn't it not fair to handle the situation and bring up the interface when you know what you can do? Only thing you need to do is to add a route to the gateway on that interface, and then add the default route to gateway.

Now look at M$ Windows it doesn't say single word and every thing works properly. Take a situation where there is a common user who doesn’t know much of techie stuff, and he is trying to install FC3. In this kind of a situation (I think badly configured DHCP servers are everywhere) his network doesn't come up and it says fix your ISP server. He will straight away give up using Linux.

These are the small things which the Linux community have to notice and fix. One of the goals is to be a common user friendly OS, otherwise people say Windows works like charm for me where as Linux is cribbs all the time. They really never bother about what the DHCP RFCs say about DHCP servers! I guess I should have a talk with Jason about it.

9 Comments:

YSC, unfortunately, you're right. Even in my workplace, 3 years back, we used to get broken DHCP replies which would be accepted by windows and my redhat 7.1 would throw it away.

I took a sniffer dump, and the response looked ok prima facie. But it must had something that my box couldn't handle. So I used to run ethereal, see the address assigned, and then manually configured it on my machine (sounds funny? PITA it was).

Then I changed my dhcp client, ditched dhcpcd and grabbed dhclient. It seemed to be more lenient, and accepted the dhcp replies. Though we have our dhcp servers fixed now. I suggest you try a different DHCP client, in case.

And these clueless ISPs are no less delinquent, who fail to understand that if something works with windows, it may still be broken.

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Think of it this way; if you were to run a 10K marathon and decided to take a cab for half of the journey; have you really achieved that goal? Would you be satisfied when you crossed the finish line?

It would be a hollow victory that could only provide a moments happiness.

Finally set a daily to do list of the things that you should do today to work towards your lifetime goals.

At an early stage these goals may be to read books and gather information on the achievement of your goals. This will help you to improve the quality and realism of your goal setting and in effect; make it easier to achieve them.

You also have to review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life.

Once you have decided what your first set of plans will be, keep the process going by reviewing and updating your to-do list on a daily basis.

You have to periodically review the longer term plans, and change them to reflect your changing priorities and experiences in your life.

I’m leaving a little “teaser” for you here to start you thinking about something you may have disregarded for awhile.

Perhaps it will make a difference in your day, month or year. Who knows, it could change your life!

I hope this is of great benefit to you, and maybe you can pass it on…

How to Begin to Achieve Your Goals

Once you have set your lifetime goals, the best thing that you can do is set a 25 year plan of smaller goals that you should complete if you are to reach your lifetime plan. From there you can just shorten your overall goal spans for example, you set a 5 year plan, 1 year plan, 6 month plan, and 1 month plan of progressively smaller goals that you should reach to achieve your lifetime goals.

Each of these should be based on the previous plan. It is the best way to begin to achieve a lifetime that is filled with and results in a life without any failed wishes. It results in a life without regret.

You see, by starting out slowly, you are giving yourself the chance to realize and work on achieving the goals that you set out to.

Nobody ever succeeds at attaining a goal that was forced through. Those that tried never really got what they were hoping for. In rushing through and trying to achieve your goals quickly you will likely miss a few key aspects that can really change your outcome.

Think of it this way; if you were to run a 10K marathon and decided to take a cab for half of the journey; have you really achieved that goal? Would you be satisfied when you crossed the finish line?

It would be a hollow victory that could only provide a moments happiness.

Finally set a daily to do list of the things that you should do today to work towards your lifetime goals.

At an early stage these goals may be to read books and gather information on the achievement of your goals. This will help you to improve the quality and realism of your goal setting and in effect; make it easier to achieve them.

You also have to review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life.

Once you have decided what your first set of plans will be, keep the process going by reviewing and updating your to-do list on a daily basis.

You have to periodically review the longer term plans, and change them to reflect your changing priorities and experiences in your life.

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